Good question! Kinda depends on what your goals are. It is one way to figure out what intensity you are working at, however must be used with caution.

As I’ve written before in the fat burning zone article, you have to be careful trying to work in this zone, because you may actually be hindering your chance to burn more calories. For people that use the heart rate to try and keep it in that zone, who are probably looking for weight loss, then I would probably recommend stop. Try just running a little further next time, or the same length in a shorter time. These are better markers of your improvement and intensity.

However it is a very good tool to see what intensity you are working at. In fact there isn’t really many other options and a lot of people like to see some feedback from their body. For athletes, endurance ones, it is great and gets used a lot. They like to know every facet of their training, and that is an important one.

So, again here I haven’t given you a direct answer, but I feel it depends on where you are at with your training and what your goals are. If you are using it because you want to stay in the fat burning zone, then stop. But, if you are a little more advanced and would like to see how your body is responding, when you are getting into a steady state, when you are in a recovered state, how long your rest intervals need to be to get into that state (if you read the above article again Jessica uses it to make sure she has gotten to a recovered state before the next interval), then there is absolutely no harm in using heart rate monitors and they are very useful. Depends on your training and the individual, as usual!

Cheers.

Just wondering do you recommend using a hear rate monitor when training? I’ve just been reading a book that recommends it, but wondered what your thoughts were?